Artist Statement (Spring/Summer 2025)
I paint from within systems I don’t fully trust, satirizing environments where people
perform roles with increasing intensity but decreasing clarity. My painting practice begins with
real experiences in those spaces, moments I’ve lived and watched pile up over the past four years
and warps them into scenes full of contradiction. Through starting with a specific environment or
memory, each piece is pulled from my own contradictory experience as a student navigating
business classrooms, frat houses, art critiques, and lockdowns. From that observed feeling, I
layer and distort the image into something more emotionally accurate, “off” in the right way.
Realism isn’t the goal. Composition and character are built instinctually, often by exaggerating
anatomy, breaking perspective, or using color to carry narrative weight. The results are scenes
where tension builds between characters, gestures, and color. The figures aren’t literal portraits,
but they carry real emotion: exhaustion, anxiety, apathy, shame, sometimes care.
Contradiction is central to my practice. I want the viewer to feel multiple things at once—humor and discomfort, sincerity and irony, tragedy and comedy. My paintings live in that in-
between. They are a form of quiet satire, exaggerating form not for mockery but to reveal how
strange and confusing the world has become. Scenes confuse emotional clarity because that
confusion feels honest to how I experience the world. The figures might be crying or smiling or
both. Robots and businessmen often show up as the same kind of guy. The satire in the work
isn’t about ridicule, it’s about recognizing the performativity and confusion baked into modern
life. My influences are all over the place, pulling visual language from art history, memes,
cartoons, and Gen Z experience. I’m shaped by figurative painters like Nicole Eisenman, Paul
Cadmus, and Keith Haring, who infuse figuration with social commentary. I’m equally informed
by the flattened, saturated worlds of Adventure Time, Futurama, and One Piece, as well as the
eclectic aesthetics of video games like Fortnite. These influences allow me to blend the formal
and the absurd in ways that feel both contemporary and historical. My paintings live in that
collapse: between high and low, art history and internet history.
Meant to feel physical, my paintings are rough and full of the painter’s touch. I resist the
urge for perfection that technology often demands, especially now when images are increasingly
smooth, digitally manipulated, or worse... AI-generated. Brushstrokes stay visible, revealing the
labor of my process. I want the work to feel human and imperfect, flaws included. The satire in
the work doesn’t aim to resolve or give answers. It’s about creating from inside the discomfort,
holding meaningful space for absurdity, contradiction, and care. Painting, for me, is a rejection
of polished standards, a way to slow down and reflect on my experience in the world. A practice
to reassemble the chaos into something strange, maybe honest, maybe funny. I don’t make
paintings to view the world—I make them to feel it.